"There's a wean coming," said I, and felt the blood rise in my face to be saying it. "Has he to be put in the heather, and die maybe in a sheuch like a braxy ewe."
"Tut," says he, his colour rising a bit; "these are no words to be in the mouth of a boy," but I kent I had him on the soft side. "A man must be dacent to his ain blood," said he, and that was the last of it.
So we had the great days at the burning of heather, and when I would be running with a kindling here and there, and watching the lowes lick into the dry scrog with a hiss before the breeze, I would be thinking much of Dan and Ronny McKinnon and me in the blazing whins, and the gangers and excisemen and riff-raff of that kidney hallooing round us. Belle loved this burning and the very fierceness of the flames, with the eerie gloaming falling, and she would not be heeding the cries of Old Betty (for Betty was much with her these days for company) to be keeping indoors.
"Hamish," she would say, coming close to me in the ruddy light, and the dark cheeks of her glowing and her eyes flashing—"Hamish, I have that in the heart of me." And as she stood thus pointing to the fires, all lit up and wild and beautiful, I thought there must surely have been away back in her story a priestess who tended fires in some far Eastern land.
Well, well, it's fine to be thinking back on these far-off days, and the work we made at the dyke-building round the first park, and how we gathered the lying stones and rousted out the deeper-set ones; and the dyker made all grist that came to his mill, for he would split up considerable boulders with great exactness and skill, a feat that never came easily to me. Then there were the stone drains to be making, and the great talking about the run of the water, and the lie of the land, and the niceness with which we laid those drains! They were all joys to me. I dreamed green meadows and well-kept dykes and good beasts.
And then the ploughing—a sair job ploughing heather roots—and the furrows I drew would have brought the laughing to Dan McBride; but the soil was not so black, but where the rabbits had burrowed there was good green grass among the red scrapings. The sowing and the harrowing were the easy job after that, and I mind me how I leaned on that dyke and gazed on the first three acres won out of the hill, when the green breard was showing, as a man might gaze on his first-born son. In these night trakings in the hills I learned the shape of every stunted bush and tree, and the place of every rock on either hand, and many's the droll ploy I came into. Ye'll still see the track yet down from the peat hags like a scar on the hillside, but the stories of the road are lost in the swirling mists, and carried away in the winter gales.
There was a burn running over the road down from the little loch with the green rush islands, where the sea-birds build, and the staghorn moss is boot-deep, and in that little plouting burn there was grand water to be making the whisky. And in the gloaming have I seen a lonely man with his dog at heel, hurrying by the burn-side, through the bare birch trees, and disappearing to his night watch in some cunning place on the hillside. And once at the place where there is now a little holly-tree, gnarled and full of years, I met the limber lads with the kegs on their backs, and carrying the worm and all the gear for the whisky-making. And we buried everything in the peat hags below the three hills, for the excisemen were close on us, and there they lie, kegs and stoups, to this day; and would not the whisky be fine to be drinking now, but maybe a little peaty.
CHAPTER XV.
THE STRANGER ON THE MOORS.
It would be well on into May, for the men were thrang with work, and the lassies at the big house haining a bit of bannock to be putting under their pillows for fear of hearing the cuckoo, when first I heard the strange whistling. It is not a very lucky thing to be hearing the cuckoo and you wanting food, and I think this is just a haver of the old folk to be making the young ones rise early on the fine clear mornings; but many's the first bite I ken was taken from below the pillows, and the cuckoo crying like all that.